Yeah $750 is much easier to shop for, though, I figured the $500 would be more challenging, heh. And at $750 I think you could just go with a smaller i5 build, or just beef up the GPU on the $500 build.

Destiny, as a self-employed PC repair/custom build guy, I've actually been following some of your builds, and I have to say they are spot on. Even as experienced as I am (10+ years), I always learn new techniques, organization methods, and cost saving alternatives from many sources, which also includes you. For example, I always built PC's utilizing 2 sticks of RAM over 1, mainly because you used to get a better throttle control over 2 when overclocking. I started watching your Build Streams and reading your build blogs/reddits, and have since switched over to the 1 stick method, mainly because I find myself not overclocking RAM as much as before, so I don't need to have that extra control, and yes, it also saves me/the customer money in the long run. Every bit counts, and I look forward to more cost-effective solutions from you.

P.S. Ever since you started using PC part picker, I started using it as well, and I couldn't be more happy with this resource, thanks for showing us what it is capable of =)

They are really good for manually overclocked CPU's IMO, because they keep that heat at a constant low temperature while you are tweaking with the system or running very demanding software, whereas a cooling fan seems to fluctuate quite a bit when doing the same thing, but this is only a minor comparison between the two. Also, CLC's seem to take up way less space in the case than a lot of cooling fans these days too, but that could just be a matter of personal experience

Great write up! Very helpful for anyone looking into building their own PC that wants the information without doing in depth research.

Personally, I couldn't live without an SSD even with a $1k priced rig but I feel like at a $1.5k price point it seems strange not to have one. (I'm talking small SSD for OS and a SC2 and Large HDD for everything else.)

For anyone looking to build a PC, it is important to think about what you will be using it for (There are things other than gaming to do on a PC :O) as well as checking out the latest prices/sales going on for identical parts.

You do mention it, I was just throwing out my preference for an SSD. For Starcraft 2 there isn't much of an advantage in adding one because with multiplayer, your load time is dependent on the player with the slowest load time. However, I notice a pretty significant decrease in load times for most major titles that have been released as of late.

It really just comes down to if you prefer squeezing in more HDD space/better cooling system/2x GFX Cards instead of one over shorter load times.

I think a 2TB HDD is overkill for gaming unless you have 100+ large titles that you always need access to. A 500GB HDD could hold about twenty-two 20GB games with room for system files. If for some reason you need to be working your way through more than that many different titles simultaneously then definitely go for a large HDD.

Overall, my point is that I encourage anyone looking to build a system to give the SSD a try even at a lower price point, especially if you're the type of gamer that mainly focuses on one or two games at a time. I was surprised by how much of a difference it made in game load time and OS boot time and couldn't live without one.

I looked at the CX600 builder from Corsair, and there are a few cheaper Antec solutions that might have saved a few $$$, but they're so hideous and it was hard to find good reviews for any of them vouching for their stability.

This is a "good" build, but it's not as specialized for gaming imo. In order to squeeze that SSD in there, you made serious compromises on the cooling ability with the case and toned back the GPU set-up to a single 780 Ti.

Again, this build is definitely good, and if you wanted to make this I wouldn't really take issue with it, but it could be "better" in regards to pure gaming imo.

You recommend the 4670 for the $1000 build, and the 4670K for the $1500 build, but prices are identical (219.99). Is this a mistake or is there a real reason for going with the non-K series on the $1000 build?

Hey Destiny. On my build, I've been debating between either a AMD R9 290x or a GTX 780 Ti for my GPU. Obviously there's an enormous price difference, but the 290x gets incredibly hot and incredibly loud. It definitely forces you to buy a cooler for it, which would reduce the price difference between the two options. Even with the cooler, would it be worth it to spend ~$150 more for less noise, or should I settle with the 290x and save a little? What are your thoughts?
*My build: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2hTcu

Destiny, stop what you are doing, and get a job as a Newegg or Amazon spokesperson or something. Fantastic quality, sources, and writing. I'm very impressed.

The only thing I am sorta iffy on, is why you don't push for users to get an SSD going as well. They are definitely the best upgrade for your money right now as they destroy load times, and allow great in OS usage. I love my SSDs and they are getting pretty cheap nowadays.

I built a rig that cost me 1300$ for my very first build recently. I centered it on the i7 4770k because i was reading a slower cpu would bottleneck a good gpu so on this advise i chose the 4770k and managed to get a gtx 760 2GB from msi oc edition. I have to say I'm quite happy with my choice as I'm killing games out there effortlessly and card isn't pushing hard at all. I'm just sharing my decision and in no way am I saying it is better than what you have here.

I've always been curious, but how do you know at what point that your processor/gpu will bottleneck one another? Is there a resource for finding this out? I was thinking of upgrading to a better GPU but I don't know at what point my i5 2500k would bottleneck.

Ok, so given the fact that you would want to upgrade means that you are looking for better performance than what you have (duh). So, points of bottle-necking aren't really "charted", but it is known to exist. the 2500k isn't a bad cpu even if it is discontinued so I would upgrade your gpu first and compare your gpu performance to others who have the same gpu but higher rated cpu's. If it is being bottlenecked then go for the upgrade. All in all if you upgrade cpu first, your going to want a gpu as well anyway since gpus don't really bottleneck cpus but it is true the other way around. In games a gpu performing at low-medium graphics will never boost to max just because of a cpu upgrade.Keep in mind this info is from my understanding of what I have read since this recent build was my first build and I was scared shitless about it into reading and watching soo much stuff.

Destiny, have you looked into PC per's Frame Rating Dissected article? If not then putting 2 280Xs which are re-branded 7970s will hinder your gaming experience. This issue is recent even to AMD and they're still working on it. Would be better to save and get CF on Hawaii GPUs than Tahitis

Steven, thanks to your comments a few days ago, I sold my HD 7950 (Sapphire 3GB) to a litecoin farmer for $430. Mine was used, so I was not able to get the 500+ some of the new boxed cards were getting on ebay.

Yet, I only paid $220 during a newegg sale for it (200 really, sold the AMD gold card for like 18$), so it's fine.

With the $200 gained by selling my GPU, I would be willing to invest 400-500 in upgrades. Obviously I need a new GPU, but I am willing to wait for a good deal. My question is, is there anything else I really should upgrade? I am not seeking 1440 res, just maxed out 1080 60+ fps on new games like Witcher Wild Hunt, etc.

hey steven i have a question, would you say Coolermaster HAF 911/922 and NZXT Phantom 410 are worth their prizes? im looking for a case with dust filters and cable management, i've checked your guide but those cases arent found over here :C

If you like them, look up reviews and check them out! The HAF cases tend to be nice, but large and expensive, and the black mesh is mehhh. The Phantom 410 is an okay case but I'm not a big fan of most NZXT cases, personally.

I ended the year with a bit of a surplus of discretionary cash, so I'm deciding between upgrading my gaming desktop (probably GPU and a monitor) or getting a nicer laptop. If I go for the laptop, how long do you think I can get away with the 580 for? I don't need to max out my games, but I don't want them to look like ass either.

Took some of your ideas in your past pc blog posts and built the machine I currently use. I love it. Thanks for the inspiration man. Considering that 500 build for my brother who wants a gaming machine on a budget. Great post.

Recently built my brother a computer so I'll chime in with a couple thoughts.

Basically my build is similar to yours at 1k, but I went for 4670k and had a downgraded gpu (got 680). The decision for this was to get a ssd for general purpose use. I also got a $15 optical just in case, although to be fair I haven't used one in a while. Money from 680 also helped to buy a noctua dh-14 because I believe after market cpu coolers are worth it.

Really considered going for the 280x, but I got the 680 on rebate and sale for around $230 I think?

Question on the OS so exactly how should i get an OS cause i would love not to spend $100 on a new OS, i mean i have a windows 7 dvd hanging around but ive already used the key and everything so what exactly do i need to do? If i recall correctly you have to verify that your windows 7 OS is genuine or else you get fucked over, or am i wrong?

Considering the $1,5k build, if I kind of required hyperthreading, would you advise me to go with a xeon as it is in a pretty much the same price range, or should I cut some corners(case, hdd, cooler,) and stick an i7 in it?

If you notice for the $1500 build, I use the case I use because it offers good enough cooling to handle those parts. The Xfire set-up will cause quite a bit of heat, and if you don't have adequate cooling you run the risk of the cards thermal throttling. For the second one, you -might- be able to put that in the 1st case, though those 290's can run hot as well, and I'm not sure if the mobo will fit (would have to double check the atx spec).

You don't need any additional case fans beyond the ones I listed.

And water cooling isn't really needed unless you want things to look nicer or want to run a huge custom loop or something.

The builds are fine but I think that you underestimate mid-range gpus by quite a bit. I've never seen you go below a hd7850 ever. I own a gtx 650 and it performs fine in every game I've played so far, even on max graphics. I understand that the graphics card is the most important part of a gaming pc but even the hd7850 is considered high-end. You could still save like another $80, at least on your budget system.

Destiny, your "$500" budget gaming rig can be tweaked for a more budget-conscious person too.

1) CPU: AMD FX-4300 for $89. This is an alright choice, and one I would select for a much more gamer-oriented build but almost any budget processor is going to work here because price should be a more important option. One could easily drop down to a Athlon II X2 370K for $54 because the difference is very minimal between the two for a budget build.

2) Motherboard: For this build the question is "how little can I pay?" Your choice is fine, but for FM2 one could go with the Gigabyte GA-F2A55M-HD2 for $42.99.

3) Storage: You have a 1TB 7200 rpm drive for $54.99, which is alright. The Hitachi A7K1000-1000 may be a dollar or so cheaper, too.

4) GPU: A 7850 for $154. For a budget-conscious build, I would go with the vanilla 7850 XFX FX-785A-ZNL4 for $89 saving a good chunk of change for no real super decrease in performance.

5) Memory: 8GB for $62. 4GB is plenty fine for a budget gaming build. G.Skill has a 4GB (2x2) pack for $37.

6) Case: You have a Fractal for $55, which is nice, but we can do cheaper at least! The Rosewill Dual Fans MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case FBM-01 is $22.

7) PSU: You have a 550W semi-modular for $64, which will work fine. The power requirements of this build are very low, so we can save some money here too. A Corsair CX430M CX ATX 80+ Bronze is also semi-modular and only $34.

The GPU and the RAM catches are really good in regards to total savings. I think I commented somewhere in the $500 build, but one of the things that's really important about shopping at this level is keeping an eye out for current deals, heh. Neither of the things you mentioned existed at those prices when I was checking, unfortunately. I could update it now to include those things, but the prices on parts at this budget seem to shift around quite a bit. :/

This one is very affordable. Naturally, these specs are not what us PC elitists would consider using for ourselves, but the build is plenty fine for desktop applications and light to even medium gaming.

Hey Destiny, I'm a little late on this, but what sort of benchmarks might you have for $500 rig? I mainly play SC2 and League, and on my shittop I occasionally get slight FPS drops in League during big fights (5-10 nothing to bad) and big drops in HotS when there are large amounts of units on screen.

Would the $500 rig be able to handle these games and others? My main game I'm looking at for playing next is The Witcher 2, which is highly taxing game on a PC from what I've heard and I know almost nothing about PC Specs and what not. How much of an upgrade would it take in terms of pricing to be able to run these games at comfortable speeds at just the lowest requirements? (might have you build me a pc soon, need an upgrade and I'm highly technilogica-illiterate)

It would be able to handle League just fine, but it would struggle with SC2. SC2 is insanely CPU-bound and horribly optimized for multi-threaded performance, so you really just want a CPU with a high clock speed that has good IPC (how much work it can do in a single thread per clock speed).

What sort of a price point would the PC be at in order to run SC2 at 45-60FPS on low settings (include into this price the cost it would be at for you to build it, I wouldn't risk doing it in fear of fucking up one of the parts)

You should get a Haswell, it's got the best single threaded performance on the market, which is what's needed for SC2. i3-4130 would probably work out fine, though I have a hard time finding proper benchmarks. In French, here's one (right under the graph, mouse over SC2):

Notice Haswell demolishing its AMD counterparts. Otherwise an i5 will do more than fine in SC2 as well. Throw either the i3 or the i5 in a H81 motherboard, add a decent $150ish GPU and you should get something that works perfectly fine for settings way above low. You could probably ultra (as SC2 isn't GPU bound) but I'm not 100% sure. Just make sure you get a Haswell CPU.

Regarding the crossfired 280xs in the 1500 build, what is your opinion on getting a 780 Ti now for the option to add another 780 to crossfire later? There's no similar upgrade path if you go with double 280xs (although it is better performance for price).

I could google this but i figure it might be good to ask someone with firsthand experience,

How does hyperthreading affect streaming performance? Right now im stuck between the 4670k and the 4770k, i have a relatively set budget for some upgrades right now, and while i could fit the 4770k in the budget, i would rather save the money to get more from a better gpu or something else if the 4670k does the same job for me.

Mostly gaming and streaming btw. Occasional video editing, but its so rare that the hyperthreading isnt a big deal for me as far as that is concerned.

P.S. Sick article man, it looks really professional, and like you know your shit really well. You should consider another article in the same vein but with a focus on upgrades for people in a similar situation as I. Like, at what generation of X piece of hardware should i consider upgrading with X budget and what you should upgrade to.

Also, UD5H vs UD3H? I can get the UD5H for about 25-30 dollars more than the UD3H, why shouldnt I? (Also upgrading my board since it doesnt support the 1155 chipset.)

Hey destiny, i dont know if youll get this, and im not computer illiterate or anything, but i havent built a computer in ~2 years and i havent had the time to research the new stuff. I want to build another computer around 500 max but i have intel i5 3570k that my friends gave to me. what mobo would you recommend to go with it? (since your 500 build is based off your amd cpu). thanks

It's quite simple really, just follow the benchmark of the $500 build. You have your CPU already, so you won't need that (nice gift from your friend btw). Swap the motherboard in the $500 build for a motherboard using the H61 or B75 chipset. I think the H61 boards might require a BIOS update however I'm not 100% sure. These motherboards are uesd for basic functionality (not for overclocking) so you can really get any motherboard from any of the big brands: MSI, Gigabyte, ASUS, ASRock and so on.

Since you already have the CPU, if you follow the $500 build, you'll have money left over. That money can be thrown into getting a beefier GPU, or perhaps an SSD.

That CPU can also be overclocked but for overclocking you'll need a Z77 chipset, which is more expensive (I think Gigabyte is the go-to for Z77). You'll also need an aftermarket cooler, whereas in a non-overclock set up the stock cooler works just fine.

hey, thanks for going out of your way for helping. i dont plan on overclocking. do you have a preference between b75 or h61? thanks for your time. with extra money i would like expansion options. would you recommend getting a nicer motherboard or indulging in an ssd? i dont plan on play graphic intensive games nor do i play on high, so im not too worried about a dope gpu. these games are just starcraft 2, dota, cs:go.

It depends on what you mean by "expansion options". Not too sure about that.

Getting a "better" motherboard generally adds very little to your computer (unless you're overclocking, in which case choosing a good motherboard is more important). There are differences between chipsets however. For example:

You'll notice that the B75 is slightly more expensive. That's because it's got 2 extra SATA ports compared to the H61. Also noteworthy is that one SATA port is SATA 3, meaning it can transfer 6 Gb of data per second. If you're going to get an SSD, you'll need a SATA 3 port to be sure that you don't bottleneck the SSD. Otherwise, differences are things like more or less USB ports, having USB 3.0 over not having them at all and small things like that. You can check specifications for the motherboard you're going to get.

An SSD, though it doesn't give any extra gaming performance, is generally considered a great addition to a PC. Basically, every program and file will load faster. Windows will go from booting in a minute to booting in 15 seconds. Small programs like internet browsers will load instantly, loading maps in games like SC2, LoL or Dota2 will be done much faster as well. Overall, your system is much more responsive. Most people opt for either 120 Gb or 240-250 Gb SSDs (840 EVO from Samsung and M500 from Crucial being the go-to's). You treat your SSD like a hard drive and install your OS and most used programs on it.

For those games I think a card like a 7870 (for example, there are other good cards out there! research!) should do more than fine, google some benchmarks. ^

i suppose if i have time for reddit, i have time for research haha. im just so out of date it makes me not want to start haha. i would like to have faster transfer rates overall. ill see what i can do. thanks for your time!

This is the build I made for about 850$ during brack friday. I picked the i5-4570 because I felt the 30$ difference in price for the 4670 wasn't terribly justified. I decided to get a Z87 because even though i'm not overclocking, those boards are considerably better than the H87. This is meant to be a multi purpose budget build. Not just for gaming. Also, i'm based in Canada.

Would you have cut somewhere in order to get a better processor? To overclock and get a CPU cooler? That was my main dilemma. Prices haven't changed that much except RAM which was 50$ back then and GPU at 210$.

What features of the Z87 board are you going to use that justifies spending an extra $40-50 compared to a B85/H81 motherboard which works just as well? The only reason I can think of is the possibility of a Crossfire upgrade down the line, ie getting a second R9 270. Otherwise there's no reason to get a Z87 board over the cheaper B85/H81 chipsets.

R9 270X is the same thing as the R9 270 by the way, only difference is that it's clocked faster. The thing is that you can clock the R9 270 higher yourself, using MSI afterburner for example. So you can just buy the R9 270, overclock it and keep yourself $20.

Overall that's ~$60 you can save, depending on whether or not you want to crossfire in the future. That money can be thrown into getting a 4670 instead of a 4570. Or you can keep the money.

If you want to overclock you'll need a 4670k (extra $20 compared to a 4670), an aftermarket cooler (~$40-50 for a decent one, up to $70 for an excellent one) and it's recommended to get a GA-Z87X-D3H since that board supports overclock the best at its price range of $100-150.

I really loved the article, agreed with pretty much everything! I have a few questions to ask at large, however:

Isn't the Rosewill Capstone much better than the Hive, at a very similar price [1][2]? A Capstone 450 for the first two builds would be sufficient in my opinion. It's also certified 80+ Gold instead of 80+ Bronze. On top of that, you get a 7 year warranty instead of a 3 year warranty [3][4]. Though reviews on the Hive seem to be positive, they seem to favor the Capstone series even more. [5][6][7]. Finally, PC builders also seem to prefer the Capstone over the Hive, saying that the Capstone is higher quality overall [8][9]. Overall, I would say that though the Hive isn't particularly bad, there's little reason not to go with the higher quality Capstone 450, which should be more than sufficient for single GPU set ups with no overclock [10][11][12]. Even the power hungry R9 290 doesn't consume more than 380ish W of power total (in fact 300W total playing Crysis 3 at 1600p, which is somewhat demanding).

This leads me to my second question.

Although the R9 290 is an amazing card in that it delivers absolutely amazing performance at its price (price is always a factor when judging computer parts, obviously), it does have one major flaw for the average user in that it runs very hot and it's very noisy. It may sometimes even throttle itself. Though the card is unquestionably great for the enthusiast (who won't hesistate to pop on an aftermarket GPU cooler, or use a custom water loop), wouldn't those drawbacks be a bit too much for the average user [10][11][12]? Or perhaps wait for big shot partners like ASUS, Gigabyte or MSI to get their own coolers on the R9 290?

Finally

Is there any reason to go for the GA-Z87X-UD3H over the comparable GA-Z87X-D3H, which is basically $20 cheaper? You can then throw that $20 into the cooler and get Noctua NH-D14 or something which are amazing and quiet high end coolers (not that Phanteks cooler you chose isn't good).

Most of this is nitpicking really but in my opinion discussion is never a bad thing.